Hecaton Arcani
Originally of a warband of Emperor’s Children, Hecaton Arcani left his legion and became a part of the Shadow Reavers Chaos Space Marines, becoming their Grand Sorcerer. In charge of the warband's human sorcerers, astropaths and psykers, Arcani maintains the complex web of communication when off the field, and aids his battle brothers with his destructive psychic might when on it. A collector of eldritch knowledge, his quest for power and forbidden understanding borders on maniacal. History Hecaton was born in the Warp. As time is meaningless in its nightmare dimensions, it cannot be stated with any certainty when that happened to occur. When asked, Hecaton only presents the millennium, if he does not decide to destroy the requester for the insolence. His parents were the inhabitants of one of the Eye of Terror's many Daemon Worlds, lowly Cultists that died when he was very young, flayed and slaughtered by a band of laughing Emperor's Children. Their amusement quickly subsiding and turning into disappointment at the ease of the kill, they found it distasteful to sully their hands with killing a helpless child, an act of sublime irrelevance. Instead, they took the child and threw him into their ship's slave pits. Harried constantly by larger slaves, Arcani developed a vicious and brutal ability to retaliate, murdering those that picked on him. First he did so with a shiv, but as his powers manifested, he began lashing out psychically in an uncontrolled manner, killing entire throngs in a single burst of Warp energy. Soon the others shunned him in fear. This had come to the notice of the Emperor's Children, and they decided to initiate the boy into their neophytes. It was a roaming Fabius Bile that oversaw the implantation process, and of 2000 chosen acolytes, only two survived: a boy named Andronicos and Arcani. Children of the Emperor Arcani studied the eldritch arts under the warband's Sorcerer Jaemus, slowly learning to use his powers. Curious beyond all, Hecaton's grimoire kept growing by the day and he proved himself to be a very fast learner. So fast in fact that Jaemus grew weary, believing the young Sorcerer would very soon replace him. One day, as Arcani was poring over some tome and working at enchanting an item for the warband's lord, Jaemus saw the opportunity and struck, attempting to smite his protégé. But as the elder Sorcerer's mind opened to the Immaterium, he sensed immediately a strange shift within the Empyrean's currents. The realization was too late and the spell was now out of his control. Backfiring explosively, Arcani turned to find his master's corpse standing several feet behind him, head blasted into tiny pieces. Thus, Arcani became the new Sorcerer of the warband. As Arcani progressed so did his brother-in-arms Andronicos. A born duelist, Andronicos had quickly advanced through the warband's ranks and became one of the most respected members of Chaos Lord Veirtani's retinue. As time passed, Arcani grew more and more cloistered, focusing all his time and energy upon poring over Jaemus's many tomes. He happened upon an oral history of the Emperor's Children, written by some long dead Chaos Space Marine who fashioned himself a poet but was disemboweled immediately by his unamused daemonic patron upon the history's reading, if the scribbled-in foreword was to be believed. Arcani had found the history of the warband riveting, absorbing instantly the romanticized portrayal of the Emperor's Children before the fall, stoic precisians who spent every waking moment perfecting their art. The Emperor's Children as they were now were a far cry from these perfectionists: debauched, lowly, spending so much time on frivolous whims and instant gratification. He realized suddenly that he was missing something, something he could not find. Growing disillusioned with the endless insanity, Arcani desired to find some small measure of his Legion's fabled perfectionism, long lost and replaced in its entirety by only the basest decadence. When the urge became too overpowering, Arcani gathered his things and snuck out into the night. But Andronicos was following. Confronting Arcani, the quarrel quickly turned into a fight. Andronicos lunged at Arcani bolt-like, twinned power swords singing through the air. But he was not fast enough. With but a thought, lightning arced from Arcani's hand, mortally wounding the charging marine. As his only friend was dying, Arcani felt a tinge of callous spite course through him and he quickly clasped his hands together in ritualistic prayer. As Andronicos bled out slowly, Arcani drew a ritual knife. He carved a sigil in Andronicos's neck and proceeded to cut out the skin from his face. The Astartes screamed. As his life ended, Arcani grabbed the essence of his soul and bound it to the flayed flesh. Binding his grimoire with it, the flayed face suddenly moved, its mouth lurching back and forth as it cursed Arcani for what he had done. His friend still lived, trapped forever in the cover of a grimoire. Battle at the Crone World After leaving the service of the Emperor's Children, Arcani roamed the Eye of Terror and Maelstrom for centuries, serving as Sorcerer to many followers of Slaanesh before ending up in the retinue of the Word Bearer Marduk Kal the Thrice-Blessed. In 897.M40, the warband roamed across Warpspace, searching for a suitable sacrifice to the Dark Prince so as to revive the Heldrake Regens Discordii. Their quest had led them to a Crone World in the Eye of Terror. As his men scoured the dead planet, Marduk Kal the Thrice-Blessed noticed the signs of a battle, and the warband went to investigate. Inside the ruins of some ancient temple, they found a group of Chaos Space Marines, dark armour and wisps of black fire dancing across their bodies, in a pitched battle against the Eldar. It was clear the alien had the upper hand. By the command of Marduk Kal, loud cacophonies resounded. With shattering force, the temple apse collapsed, and the Word Bearers, howling and baying, chanting dark canticles and giving praise to She Who Thirsts, opened fire upon the Eldar rear. Blastmasters and sonic blasters roared through the halls as the Word Bearers advanced to take the Eldar as their prize. Seizing the initiative, the black-clad Heretic Astartes descended with renewed vigour upon the aliens, striking from dark corners. Those of the warband's remaining Blastmaster specialists regrouped at the temple entrance and fortified their position as they returned fire. The greedy eye of Slaanesh turned upon the battle, and daemons began materializing to strike at the Eldar. Caught so in the crossfire, the xenos fought their way valiantly through baying daemons and Chaos Space Marines, dragging the wounded and seizing spirit stones before evacuating en masse through the Webway. Thanking the Word Bearers for their timely entrance, the black-armoured Chaos Space Marines introduced themselves as the Shadow Reavers. Finding commonality in their worship of Slaanesh, the two warbands sat together and conversed. The Shadow Reavers were searching for a specific piece of xenotech, a shadow field as worn by the Drukhari to complete a tech-heretical device fashioned by the Krypteian Techarchy, their allied hereteks. When completed the warp device could cloak their battle barge both from view and from sensors. An alliance was struck, and the coalition began planning an assault on the Hive World of Skaar, to be set up as a trap for the elusive Dark Eldar. The Reavers would get their xenotech, while the Word Bearers would get to put the planet's population to the sword in the name of the Dark Gods. Spending time together with the Reavers, Arcani was intrigued by their strange ways, venerating absolute silence as perfection, and utilizing tactics that relied on guerrilla warfare and smart, fluid engagement. He found something within their methods that spoke to him, something of that feeling of the romanticized perfectionist. And when Skaar finally burned, Arcani announced he would part ways with Marduk Kal and join the Reavers. Sent on a pilgrimage to find the Black Planet, Arcani beseeched its master the Black Prince. The Daemon Prince accepted his service and granted him the same gift as the Reavers, black flames beginning to emanate from Arcani's purple, black and gold armour. When he reached the warband's homeworld of Krypteia IV, he was accepted as an equal, being granted a set of implants that would imitate the warband's geneseed flaw, which resulted in painful, unbearable super-hearing. Not having an Astartes psyker of their own, he was immediately proclaimed Grand Sorcerer - overlord of all the psykers and witches of the warband, and Arcani took to his charge with the utmost zeal. Appearance and Personality Fair of complexion, Arcani's face is that of an attractive youth. His eyes glow incessantly with the faint energy contained within him, and his short, full hair is a silver white. Sporting a purple cape and white fur over his power armour, Arcani carries around a jumble of wards that give him a very disheveled and disorganized look, yet nothing could be further from the truth, for each ward and trinket's placement is intricately planned for reasons both pragmatic and arcane. Like the Shadow Reavers that he serves, his body is covered in black flames that veils his presence, hiding it from sight. It has been said that Arcani was born in the wrong generation, for in some ways he is more akin to the Emperor’s Children of old. Obsessed religiously with personal perfection and the study of the Immaterium in all its breadth, he has little time for anything else. While the Reavers too hold festivals of base debauchery akin to those of the Emperor’s Children, Arcani has abstained from both in equal measure, as he spends all time not fighting on the field in research, attended only by the cackling and shrill baritone resonating off the soul trapped in his grimoire. Without respite Arcani plunges into his work, often having to be reminded to eat or sleep by his servants. A fatal mistake, for such insolents are summarily killed for their intrusion into Arcani's study, for he is quick to anger and quick to destroy with eldritch power. Skills and Equipment While not the greatest infiltrator of the Reavers, the daemonic gift of the Black Planet does give Arcani some proficiency in the skill. With awareness born of super-sensory sound perception courtesy of his implants, as well as his innate prescience and telepathic ability, Arcani is an investigator beyond compare, often intuitively coming to conclusions to problems others cannot even perceive to exist. For this reason, the Shadow Lords, leaders of the Reavers' Brotherhoods, often will consult him, holding the Grand Sorcerer's opinion in high regard. At times he has been known to prophecy; these episodes are usually transcribed by servants and slaves, many of which go insane from the psychic backlash of witnessing the premonition, the truth searing itself forever into their brains. Most of these are cryptic observations that not even Arcani can decipher, a fact that brings him great pain and wastes a vast amount of his time attempting to rectify. Bearing the vibrant colours of the Legion of his origin, Arcani carries around a plethora of magic wards and sigils from his belt, flowing down his black robe. One of these is a war-horn made from the Black Prince's own spiked projections, the sound of which only Shadow Reavers and those others blessed by the Black Prince can hear. When blown, it is said to amplify the power of their daemonic gift, the Black Planet's essence. Atop Arcani's backpack stands a Sigil of Corruption. He bears also two relics from his days in the Emperor's Children: the flayed-skin-bound Andronicos Tome, containing the bound soul of his dearest brother-in-arms, and the Sword of Jaemus, a force sword said to have been made from a brand of the Palatine Blades. He descends to war at times on his personal gilded jump pack. Category:Chaos Space Marines Category:Chaos Characters Category:Chaos Space Marine Characters Category:Chaos Category:Chaos Sorcerers Category:Slaanesh